A transgender woman in the U.K. was sentenced to 12 weeks in an all-male prison after pleading guilty to assault, Pink News reports.

Tara Hudson, 26, who, according to the Change.org petition co-created by her mother Jackie, has lived as a woman her whole adult life and has undergone six years of gender reconstruction surgery, was assigned to the male prison because she does not have a Gender Recognition Certificate, which is a formal process that provides proof of gender transition.

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According to the petition, the prison they're sending her to is "where HM Inspectorate of Prisons, when they carried out an inspection last year, said levels of violence had risen since their last visit and "were now considerably higher than in similar prisons." The inspectors also reported that "not enough was being done to protect some vulnerable prisoners."

The co-founder of the Bath Gender Equality Network, Ceri Jenkins, says the petition to move Hudson to an all-female prison was intended to "let [Hudson] know she's not alone, and she has so many people in her corner. Trans and other LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender) people are fighting a constant battle against oppressive systems and ideologies, and this can be so exhausting and disheartening. They need allies to step up to the plate, to help raise their voices, and to lift them to a place where they can be heard for themselves."

The petition asking Bath magistrates and the British judicial system to amend her sentence currently has over 8,000 of the 10,000 signatures it needs.

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